He should just move into my house. Last night, my husband texts me saying that his ex-stepdad (The MIL’s been married 3 times, now, I think? She must think that makes her more desirable. I don’t know, but to me, anyone who’s been married over twice just screams “RED FLAG, RED FLAG, RED FLAG!!” But, I digress.) has moved about 45 minutes away from us, and we’re going to visit. Tonight. “Huh,” I think to myself. Ok. Wonder what prompted that. Well. Let me just fill you in. As it stands, I’m not gonna be able to let my son out of the back door without armed bodyguards. The ES’s woman/common-law wife has a 26 year-old son, who by all accounts is very wealthy, and a very successful racecar driver that was arrested and indicted on child solicitation charges via internet, after showing up to *ahem* “collect his spoils” so to speak. He’s told his mother that he didn’t even get out of the car, and that all he did was to pull into the parking lot of the school. First of all, what the hell was he doing there, if he knew the girl was still in school? He also told his mom that she told him via PM that she was underage. So, the question remains. What the hell…..anyway. He’s in a federal prison in Indiana(?) and they moved so she could be closer to him. Now, this is the only dad my husband has ever known, he’s an alcoholic, has no teeth, and now is in possession of a stepson sex offender. And I wonder why I’ve had to housebreak him (the husband, not the ES). I keep thinking my husband really wants no part of his group of genetic/nurturing bodies, but I’m beginning to think otherwise. Ohhh. My husband has been very positively influenced by my dad, grandads, and uncles, but I don’t know if it’s enough to combat this. I told YCU last night on the way home that we are NOT having them over the house all the time. A little of them goes a long way, but especially now that they’re blind proponents of a convicted felon!! I know. I already sound like those crazy mothers that want to burn the Harry Potter books, right? You know, the ones who block out all the tv channels except PBS and the christian cartoon channels? Oh, I don’t want to be like that, but I don’t want my kid exposed to this, either. I’m already coming in contact with people who are giving me that knowing look, and you can tell they’re thinking to themselves “She’ll see, once that kid gets here, she’s just gonna have to give in and let ‘fill in the blank’ happen.” I just try to respond that all I have is convictions and a plan. It might not work, but I’ve gotta try, right? All of a sudden, all these undesirables are coming out of the woodwork! Why do they pick now to latch on? Why? Oh, and apparently, my dad’s wife’s kids are just exactly the kind of trouble we thought they were. He told my husband that one of the boys (I’m not sure which one) is in lockup right now. My husband interjected that this was presumably for drugs, but Dad wasn’t really clear. And apparently, Dad is just going along with her, saying how great he is, and he just can’t believe it, etceter-AH, etceter-Ah, etceter-AH. (Watch “The King and I” with Yul Brynner, if you don’t get it.) You know, Dad used to be smart. Dad used to not want us to associate with known criminals. I can’t believe he’s going along with this! What’s the deal? Are there just more stupid people in the world than there used to be? And how did we get roped in with them all! It makes me want to not leave the house. This is probably just due to hormones and pregnant brain, cause I know I can’t control every situation. But all this just creeps me out to the core! It seems like every “grown-up” (read parent/step-parent/adult older than us in our family) in our lives has gone bazonkers, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it! Did they not pay attention to all those lectures they gave us growing up? I can still repeat some of them word for word. You know, the one where they kept telling us “If you associate with poor examples, then you are guilty by association”, blah, blah, blah. (This lecture was repeated a lot.) I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.

Fat. Huge and fat. 22wks, 5days, fat. Which is stupid, cause not only did I do this to myself, I knew what I was in for ahead of time. I’m just still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I’m supposed to be excited about it. *sigh* Today, I had another OB appt. His FHR was 148bpm, and he was measuring (by abdomen) 22ish weeks. Which is perfect. On the doppler, Dr M. said it sounded like he was having a party. He was forming his own conga line, I think.

In other news, my cousin is having a girl. She’s only a month or so behind me. She’s the one who has PCOS and has been trying for like 5 years. I’m so excited for her! She’s been so discouraged, so I’m glad things are going well so far. My MIL keeps emailing asking for paperwork for my stepson. Oh, yeah, did I tell you? He’s living with her now. Which is better than where he was, but the way she went about it was the family felony I was telling you about. The poor kid has enough problems that he doesn’t need to be around my son anyway, but my MIL should never have gotten involved until we asked her. I’ve told my husband, and he says he agrees, that she’ll never have unsupervised time with Fletcher. He was angry at first, but he’s lived with her crazy, inappropriate bullshit so long, he doesn’t know any better. She manipulates, he falls for it, that’s the crux of their relationship. As best I can tell, he still hasn’t explained what the boundaries are to be. He can be so avoiding sometimes. I think he’s probably waiting till she does something stupid and then expects me to handle it, rather than being proactive and letting her know ahead of time what will and won’t be tolerated. If you see me on the news around Christmas, you’ll know what happened. Anyway, she keeps requesting his birth certificate, which we have a copy of, but we’ve moved a couple of times since then, so I’m not sure where it is. Why can’t she just go downtown to the Hall of Records and get it herself, like I did? She really can’t be so stupid as to think nothing’s wrong. Surely she doesn’t think she did the right thing and we’re the crazy ones, right? Oh, that life-altering information she withheld was the whereabouts of my stepson. We tried for 8-10 months to find him and get in touch with his mother and couldn’t find him. She (the MIL) knew where he was the whole time and kept it from us because, she said, the ex-bitch told her she’d run off with him and we’d never see him again if she told. Probably the reason EB told her this was that she was in contempt of court and knew that my husband had a say in the proceedings if he could be contacted. Yeah. It’s a hot mess. I know. I married myself into a Jerry Springer family. I’ve said before that my husband was the only one of his family to evolve past neanderthal. I’ve tried for so long to let my husband handle things and set boundaries, but this has got to stop. I won’t have my son involved in this. If I have to, I will. It’s coming down to that, I can see the writing on the wall. I just hope it’s not in the blue crayon they’ll give me at the loony bin.

Update: My head hurts. I really wish the barometric pressure would stop changing. My sinuses are screwed up enough without all that pain. I think tonight’s gonna be a benadryl kind of night. After I make fried chicken, cornbread, mashed taters, peas, and corn, that is. I didn’t thaw that chicken all day for nothing.

that I was great. Now, how sweet is that? I’m gonna start floating soon, and probably end up in Oz. Me, I don’t think I’m all that great. Maybe just refreshing, or quirky, or blunt. I lose my patience with sugarcoatings, and tend to want to get to the bottom of all of it. And I usually can pretty quickly. Thank you, you know who you are!

As usual, I’ve let my emotions carry me away. In my previous post, I made some statements that while I feel are completely true, came out in a condescending manner. For that, I’m sorry. I’ve had overwhelming support(?)/agreement from most of the people who’ve commented, and I thank you all for that. I was just made angry by the story I read, and my mouth/brain got the better of my judgment. (How long can I blame that on placenta brain? I wonder…)

I’ll write what I want to. I’ve been sitting on this thought for a couple of days. I recently read a horrifying story on one of the blog sites about a mother who lost her 1st baby because the cord got compressed when her water broke. I was terribly sad for this lady, and still am, but then went on to read that she was apparently attempting a home birth, with a midwife at the ready for “The Big Event”. So, no fetal monitors, no trained personnel, and no benefits of modern medicine. Had she had these luxuries, she would have had an emergency c-section, and likely had a beautiful baby girl to take home with her. Oh, wait, she did have these luxuries. There was a birthing center close by! I’m still not sure if this complete malpractice of obstetrics was due to the patient’s ignorance in insisting on a home birth, or misguidance on the part of the midwife due to some delusional belief that it’s safer for the baby to avoid all that modern stuff. I guess some people are willing to take the risk. Hell, no. I don’t think so. I’m grateful everyday that I’m fortunate enough to live in a city where there are DOCTORS to take care of me during my time of need, HOSPITALS in which to carry out this endeavor, and FETAL MONITORS to record my baby’s every movement, heartbeat, and distress level. I’m sorry to offend anyone’s delicate, earthy sensibilities, but if you’re so afraid of a needle that you put yourself and your child at risk of DEATH by not coming to a hospital/birthing center to be monitored, I really have to wonder if you’ve read anything written in the latter half of the 20th century about childbirth. Now, my perspective is likely skewed due to the time I practiced in L&D. I was a shit-magnet. I would walk into a room and dumb shit would happen. I told you all about the baby grabbing my finger while still in utero. I once witnessed a baby turn breach in the womb. I was hooking up those monitors everyone seems so afraid of, and watched the woman’s abdomen turn into the Bering Sea in January while the baby readjusted his surroundings. I assisted in a c-section delivery where the cord was being compressed under the baby’s head, but hadn’t prolapsed through the cervix. Baby’s FHT just crashed with no warning. That baby lived, though, thanks to that modern medicine. Actually, all those babies lived. Mother did too. I kinda wonder what goes through those’s “alternative care professionals'” minds when their patient gets to carry home a baby that they couldn’t have saved. I’ve heard the arguments about how women have been birthing babies for thousands of years, yada, yada, yada. These same people always seem to forget that during those thousands of years, lots of babies DIED as a result of birthing complications. Oh, yeah, and they tend to forget the mothers did too.
I’m also a fan of better living through chemistry. If God wanted us to hurt, he wouldn’t have invented anesthesia. If a patient wants to have natural childbirth, then, by all means, let her do it. Support her, bring out all the toys (the birthing balls, stools, squat bars, the works), breathe appropriately, whatever she needs to get through this. However. Your beliefs are not always the patients’ beliefs. If a patient decides after the 10th contraction that she’s made a huge mistake and wants an epidural, pain medication, whatever, dammit, she wants it! She needs it! I once heard a midwife tell a patient “Oh, if I give you anything for pain before you reach 5 centimeters, it could stop your labor.” I’m not shitting you. (Imagine me, nostrils flared, breathing heavily, pissed off mother ape when I heard this.) That is such bullshit. So, I argued. What about those patients who stall out at 3 cm? Huh? What about them? Do they just get to lay there and suffer? Deal with it, stupid, this is what you signed up for? Is that your attitude? Not only is that not true, but they have this wonderful little drug called Pitocin, which is a hormone secreted by your very own pituitary gland in nature, and is also synthetically manufactured, that not only induces labor, but can be used to give it a bit of oomph. I can hear the battle cries now. But what about the risk to the baby? Oh, yeah. Those fetal monitors I was telling you about? Yeah, this is when they come in handy, see, cause they can be used to monitor the baby’s stress level and heartrate, so at the slightest poot of a hint of distress, we trained professionals can come swooping in to save your baby. All that natural stuff is gonna be a pretty poor consolation prize if your home birth/natural delivery/no need for healthcare professionals turns out badly. Just so you know, I don’t like needles and unnecessary medicine any more than the next person. I’m a nurse. I work around it every day, and thank God every day that it’s not me on the receiving end. But, I’ve lost a baby. Due to circumstances completely beyond my control. I went through the hell that is Post-partum Depression. I’m still in it, although the jumping bean is helping tremendously. (I know, it’s a fragile state I’m building for myself, but that’s another post.) I’ve been there, and having been there, I would walk through the fire of a thousand suns, become a friggin’ pin cushion of IV sticks, be pinned down on bed-rest indefinitely, and suffer whatever the doctors and nurses wanted to dole out if it means my baby might be one iota safer. Thanks for letting me rant.

In other news, his name is Fletcher. No word on a middle name, as yet, but stay tuned….

Now that my husband has been working outside his field, he feels that he likes it better anyway. Great! I think to myself. Then he has this idea to start his own business, in a shitty economy, with the money he’s supposed to be getting from his workman’s comp injury. I just want to pay everything off possible and live that way for awhile, get some money in the bank, you know. This makes me worried. I plan to dig my heels in and “withhold” until I get my way. It’s not that I think he couldn’t do it. He’s very bright, and business minded. And he promises to continue working full time until the business takes off. Assuming he gets the job he’s being interviewed for. There seem to be a lot of assumptions here. And to top it all off, he tried to convince me by dangling the opportunity to stay home with the baby. I had to remind him that if he owned his own business, and I wasn’t working, we’d have to try to get independent insurance. Yeah, fat chance. He’s got pre-existing hypertension. We’ll never be able to afford it, and we certainly wouldn’t be able to afford anything good. Not to mention, if he has employees, a workman’s comp claim could ruin us. Also, just think of the headache of trying to pay taxes, deductions, partnerships…I could go on. I just think it would be waaaaay too much hassle. He says you can’t make money if you don’t take a risk. I think I’ve discussed before how I feel about risk. Especially now, when we’re gonna have to feed another one soon. Yes, I plan for him (still no name) to be on the tit for awhile, but what if that plan goes awry? See, like I said, assumptions. Hmmmm. Maybe just discussing all of this A LOT will at least slow down the pace of this Nina/YCU/our whole life heading down the toilet snowball. I suppose it’s not a bad thing to have a driven dreamer for a husband. I know this idea won’t fail because of lack of initiative. I just don’t have faith in the economy keeping us afloat. Anyone got some floaties? One of those pool noodles, maybe?

Oh, and the jumping bean is moving like 100 times per hour. I’m not tired of it yet. I’ve heard that I will be. But for now, it’s wonderful.

I don’t know how to scan pics, and the YCU’s too tired in the evenings when he gets home to do more than eat, soak, and hit the sack. So, I’ll just have to show you the next pics, or just describe in vivid detail. I’m better at the latter anyway.
In other news, I’m bustin’ out. Again. I’m sooo disgusted. I just bought maternity bras, and they don’t carry in-store the size I need now. So I’m gonna have to take a chance that the ones I order will fit. I’ve looked online, and the least expensive ones I’ve found were over $45!!!! That’s a lot of money to blow on something I’m (hopefully) only gonna be wearing for a year, at most. These damn things are making me more and more uncomfortable, and I don’t have the money to “support” them anymore! Pun totally intended. Why do I have to be a freak of nature? Why do I have to be poor right when I need not to be? Yes, I know these are questions that have been asked since the dawn of time, but can’t there be an easily attainable solution? *sigh. Constructing fortified crane as we speak*

*sigh* I’m having a spot of trouble nailing the YCU down for much of anything, apparently. I’ve not forgotten about the pics, I have them in hand. It’s just getting them into the YCU’s hands and onto this blog that seems to be the hold-up. We’ve been busy.

That’s what little OP said today, just before they put the u/s scanner on my belly. I actually have a picture of him examining his junk. Yep. Anyway, the perinatologist pronounced him perfect, so barring anything dire, I’m buying paint soon! Pics to follow!

But, ya know, I really shouldn’t. There’s lots of women who are hoofing this path all by themselves. I’m not by myself, not even a little bit, and the YCU is really a good guy. He just wasn’t pre-housebroken, so I get frustrated and lose my patience sometimes. (Now, if I could just nail him down long enough to come up with a name…) We’ve been having fun this week feeling little Optimus Prime move. That’s his name for now. Yeah. I know. He threatened to decorate the nursery in Transformers or Spiderman, but I nixed that one in favor of helicopters and trains. The movement’s been very reassuring for Mommy, cause she really is losing her mind. Every single day, I have to restrain myself from tackling the anesthesia tech at work and forcing him to turn on the cardiac u/s machine they have in there. I’m doing better, though, now that he’s making me aware of his presence by practicing to become a gymnast. (Thank you, Sweet Pea.)